


Technically, Missing

by BigScaryDinos



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Blood, Blood As Lube, Blood Kink, Cannibalism, Cannibalistic Thoughts, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, M/M, Mental Instability, Murder, Not Beta Read, Post-Episode: s03e13 The Wrath of the Lamb, Rough Sex, Stockholm Syndrome, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-29
Updated: 2019-11-29
Packaged: 2021-02-17 22:02:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21600439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BigScaryDinos/pseuds/BigScaryDinos
Summary: (post Fall)Hannibal and Will are on the run when it is time to get a snack.
Relationships: Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Comments: 3
Kudos: 36





	Technically, Missing

Some sensations are childish. Bruised ribs. Raw knees. Loose teeth. 

There is nothing childish about Hannibal. Nothing about Hannibal has ever been that of an adolescent. Everything is a therapy session of hashing post traumatic stress until his appetite is sated enough to keep his teeth _and_ knives tucked away.

“Do you think of this as child-like behavior?” 

Jesus. Fucking. Christ. Everything was a question. There were no answers, just an endless round and round like a battering ram against a tree. Will doesn’t answer. Hannibal prompts him all the same with all the softness of a serial rapist at a women's shelter. “Billy? His voice has no kindness inside it. The concept is as far away as the moon. Empty empathy.   


“Nobody calls me that.” His knuckles are sticky behind his back and his eyes won’t open all the way - what with the skin in a fissure. His skull is splitting in a way that would make Pangaea proud - never to be back again in all one piece. Not until ice melts from snow caps and all the animals drown. All his joints are frozen stiff and when he tries to move it all makes some sickening noise. Cracks. Pops. It _would_ hurt him if this wasn't some bizarre out of body moment. Honestly? All he can think about is the stickiness. It's like melted cotton candy across his palms. The flavor of the day is iron.   


“What makes something childish? A perception? Is this ingrown wisdom or developed? Has someone told you this is wrong?” Hannibal’s voice only understands ice. He steps closer. Moves back. He is the only chess piece on the board.

Nothing makes sense, and when you think you are dying there are odd things you notice. 

The color of the carpet - eggshell blue for a baby. The smell in the air filled with static and sweat. The crisp seams of Hannibal’s pants, and Will’s eyes they shut for another second. What did he say out loud. What did he imagine. What is happening inside this room. With knuckles closed around the handle of a blade Hannibal makes a move. One step forward, two to the left, one towards him again. Maye it is the double vision or maybe it is all such a strange dance.   


He doesn’t strike or cut or carve. He sets it down on the table and Will blinks away blood. When he opens his eyes it’s five years too late and he only remembers the highlights. 

The woman offering him a key card breaks her own TV static life for a moment to tell him that he has sad eyes. A piece of his people skills remains under scar tissue that criss-cross his body. He is cattle to prod and poke. His skin is leather to chew if the meal is too soft. He still has something left of him untouched to aid to public appeal, however.   


“S-sad?” He asks, it’s not a stutter because he has never had that exact dysfunction - yet it’s more shock. She is ageless without wrinkles but with thinning hair. She has one tattoo on her wrist but it is old. Older than the sun and Will knows they will avoid that later. She will taste like pork. She has no answer so he repeats himself again. 

With her lack of a response he notes her inside his mind. She looks above his brow with questions inside her face but she doesn’t ask them. She hands him a key card. 225A. Second floor. No elevator. Only stairs. Cheap motels don’t ask questions when he pays in cash and leaves in the middle of the night. There are no cameras here. No witnesses when they are finished.   


Nobody knows him - not really. With his hair thick and curly and short and his sad, sad eyes with Hannibal waiting in the car. 

“How long are you at the front desk?” 

She tells him a number he files away for now. It will be dark then. She will be weak and concerned and soft and pliant. He has fished in these rivers before and understands what catches the eye of the local animals. 

They enter their room together and the sheets are clean for a moment. Hannibal is neat - this is his night. They have run and run until they deserved a medal - thick and gold for a first place job well done. Instead it is plastic on the beds - then the choice is changed. Tonight will be a split again and Hannibal removes the film with grace and tucks it inside a leather suitcase. He truly prefers it this way but it is simply _so_ much more of a mess. Messes are not proper, they are in a word - messy.   


It’s a hunger they both share to some degree - a form of primal satisfaction in ways only discussed by most in the dark. Instead it is the dinner conversation over wine. Hannibal will never settle for the cheap - instead he would rather grow his own in vineyards of Italy, aged with perfection in mind. Humidity controlled basements. Oak casks. They compromise with a fine vintage of beer - the current year and grown too warm in the fading summer sunlight. The relationship is not that of a fling and these long days seem to fit somebody else. 

“Do you love me?” Will watches Hannibal while taking a long pull on his own beer, clasped between his fingers. Hannibal doesn’t move, not even his throat pulses. 

“Do you want me to?”

“It’s been a long time.”

“What is your definition of time? Moments or the noise of a clock on a wall?’

Will doesn’t speak, can’t fathom these questions - they’re worthless words especially for Hannibal. This is not his trauma digging but instead a killing of seconds. He is not nervous but instead tensing for a moment - a meal - a touch. He is starved. Will flexes his fingers, enjoying the moment of power for what it is, as little as it is.   


Will moves through the room and opens the door. He’s returned to the front desk without feeling his feet touch the ground. His moments are gone away as quickly as they come. Hannibal has adjusted his understanding in that only some things need to be kept. He wants to remember but years and years seem like decades instead. Faded and washed out his brain has been molded and remolded until all he has is _this_ moment.  


He touches her wrist with his own fingers and she looks at him and her face - so full of those questions finds him inside the stairwell with lips meeting lips. A seduction of necessity. Sometimes Will is the hunter and sometimes he is the bait. Tonight he is the trap, he is the fresh meat thrown into the rough waters. He knows what will happen and even with a thick rope of tongue inside his mouth he salivates. His heart aches when he allows himself to think that maybe they is why he salivates.   


He wants to hate what he has become, but he simply can not find the time. 

She has no name, no personality, no nothing. You don’t think of the burger on your plate as a hulking beast named Betsy. You don't weep for a chicken, fish, or sow. She writhes against him and he wonders if she understands. His fingers find purchase inside her roots and pulls there. She moans against him. He thinks of how the only way he could ever surprise Hannibal is by not truly surprising him. 

A man is waiting for him a few feet away, a man who believes the only way to be prepared is to always prepare. 

There is no surprise except - once. 

Hannibal - he hopes and is ready to allow his hope to falter. He understands that to expect actions from another is to expect failure. So that there is no outcome he is unready for. Always be ready for disappointment and you will never find yourself disappointed.   


Once he had prepared for Will for bring him the dragon and all outcomes were examined under a spyglass. In the ways that were mysterious yet not wholly unexpected they would meet under a blood moon and William may kill them all, or watch the show. He may take part in the fun or leave before the first strike comes to blows. One, none, or all may die.   


Yet - Hannibal never would have expected the eventual fall, not truly. But what came couldn’t be said after that night they both died and came back as different people and now - the surprises were endless in a way. 

Animals adapt. 

She pushed his fingers into her collarbones and thrust her hips against his as he whispered into her skin they should go into his room. Have a moment together. The movement was fluid. The door opens easily enough and to the untrained eye they are alone. She doesn’t look, maybe she doesn’t care, mostly she is too slow.   


Hannibal likes to say that fear sometimes poisons the meat. 

Will can’t taste the difference. 

She complies against his hands, strong and pushing her into the King below her. Knees buckle and tonight is Hannibal’s turn to watch the show. 

Too late she feels eyes on her supine body. Will’s hands have been in more places than just her underwear and he has pulled the switchblade too quickly from his pocket - opened in a flash of steely glint under cost effective light bulbs. 

Once Hannibal had removed the plastic wrapping understanding had spread and tonight the blood soaks through her pale pink shirt, into the beige comforter. Pink - red - black. He name tag shakes on her supple breast with her gasps - the bright white nearly too brilliant against the spreading stain. She is too surprised at first to scream and Will brings his lips to muffle and swallow her last moments. Hannibal would say this is a delicious first course, a fine appetizer to the true meat of the night. 

The knife is lodged so deeply into her chest he struggles to remove it. His knuckles crack. The blade shifts. A thick arterial spray arches into the air and he is drenched with his mouth against hers, almost like the easy - one - two breaths they teach men and woman all over the world in gyms and hospital rooms. As simple to take a life as it is to save one. 

“Is this something I should be concerned about?” A smile is inside the chill of Hannibal’s voice from the edge of the room, the woman’s limbs become doll like. Her eyes listless. She only gasps into Will’s open mouth until he feels safe to pull away. She sounds like a fish thrown onto the boards of a boat. He feels her chest, each rib under his fingertips like piano keys. He allows the blood to pool under him, through the knees of his pants, below her body. It will drip into the carpet. 

“I don’t think so.” He brings the knife down again, understanding he will be delivering the killing blow. The lungs struggle, but she can’t continue the fight. He straddles her hips and feels the last moments of her existence bleed into the drab motel. Maybe they will clean it, maybe they will tear up the carpets and put in new mattresses. Will has never enjoyed playing with his food like Hannibal does. From the corner he can feel approval coming off his partner in waves. 

“William, I do appreciate the way you are...embracing this irregular lifestyle.” And Will wants to tell him to shut the fuck up. There is no embracing anything, except of course Hannibal himself. Will understands after the passage of time that he has the power in this moment if in all others he is just a sheep. Blood streaks his face, clots in his hair, stains under his nails. The air around them reeks - and this is what Hannibal can live off. When food, water and air itself is gone it is moments like this that propel him forward. 

So he propels himself forward and bloody and raw stands from his perch atop the unwilling victim. He almost trips and stumbles but the adrenaline fuels him to stand upright and his fingers reach out and grab at Hannibal’s collar. 

It’s always white. A fine white, crisp and perfect. It will never be worn again, it will be burned and the ashes spread in the ocean or a river. Ten Will Graham whorls and swirls decorate the material. He wants to shake him, spit into his eyes and blame the downfall of his very world on Hannibal. 

They both know it is all his fault. Mostly all his fault. It may be a ninety to ten split. Hannibal would quip something about man being unable to make choices he would never make willingly even when put under immense pressure. This sensation is that - immense pressure. The way his fingers tighten and Hannibal - he does not move. He understands the game, the long plays he’s reaching for. The moment that all the power in the room is transferred willingly.  


Will kisses him so quickly and sharply it hurts him. It’s a boulder colliding with an equally immovable force and it wouldn’t be right unless he shoulders some kind of pain. He presses himself against the body before him and hopes one day he can smear enough of the blood so deeply it will stain him. Taint his soul. Splay his guilt to the world to see. 

Tonight it seems unlikely and Hannibal opens his mouth if only a fraction of an inch. He allows the invasion but only to give an illusion of control and neither man rocks on their feet despite the fury of the clash. This could be love, but it isn’t. This is a matter of ownership, because when the only thing you have left is your body it is only a matter of time until someone takes that too. 

Unsafe inside his own mind, Will forces himself to think in the moment. Brings his hands up to Hannibal’s face - hot and sticky with something akin to mud in the dark he feels the jawline, the skin gently folding under the ears into the thumping pulse of a neck. He would say  _ I love you . _ He could whisper  _ I hate you.  _ It would only be a series of syllables. Hannibal is a man of touch in moments like this and the blood coats his skin. 

Will plays his own game. He knows what this will mean but understands safety in a matter of discomfort. He has understood the ending of this game for far too long. Shame and pain are a second skin he can slip on inside motel rooms with rotting skin beside him. He brings one finger to the lips before him, slides it between them - suckles at the blood there. He can hear a slight intake of breath and the game is afoot. Sticky and damp he pulls gently at the dark thinning hair with the hand not currently being devoured. 

He thinks that word then tries to unthink it. Dangerous to think of himself on the same level as the woman behind him. Consent can be forgotten but all it takes to break composure is one whispered word.  _ Yes. _

Years of tossing bodies into freezers, off cliffs, into his bed has made the older man so much more formidable and in one second he has Will pinned - his own bloody back pressed against the bathroom door. It slams into it’s frame and it seems the whole room shudders when Will does. Bruises will form like early spring blossoms between his shoulder blades and he thinks of the ache - but travels through his body before he can manage to think a complete thought.

He can’t help himself. Stockholm Syndrome at it’s finest find his intestines twisting inside his stomach, his innards roar loudly and he can feel himself harden against the well used muscles of the older man’s thigh. Will hates himself every single time. Each time he promises himself he’ll sooner down a bottle of pills before this happens again. Put a gun in his mouth and pull the trigger. Slit his wrists like a teenage girl in a hot bath. Somehow this keeps happening. 

He catches a lower lip between his front teeth and he grinds his enamel against each other and Hannibal - it’s only because he allowed it to happen, laughs and pulls back. Will thinks about letting go, yet doesn't. Bites harder because he can. Who can draw blood from a monster but another monster.   


Each night there are two ways, a passive road and a more active trail. Tonight he tastes iron inside his mouth and feels arms grip his own. He pulls on the hair he’s managed to keep a hold of until the clumps of roots are in his fingers instead of a scalp. 

He sees black when his head hits the floor. The bed, as bloody and occupied as it is at the current moment is far too good for him and his transgressions. The two bodies are less human than they are shells performing a dance as Hannibal knows exactly the places to put extra pressure on to cause a maximum of discomfort. A knee to the softest skin under the umbilicus, a hand wrapped around the brittle bird bones of a bloody wrist, his own face so close and continuous they share breath and meld together. 

Hannibal never threatens. He doesn’t have to. He doesn't whisper something like  _ I’m going to kill you.  _ He doesn’t say  _ I’ll fucking gut you like a pig.  _ Instead he says so softly into the night that this may not even be happening - 

“Don’t ruin dinner.” 

Will kisses him again so furiously he can’t see straight, his head thumps back against the filthy carpeting. They don’t undress, more or less allow the fabric between their bodies grow soaked with sweat and blood. Salt saturates them and the only sound for a moment is the desperate noise of one zipper and the rustle of pants and underwear - tugged down together around knobby knees. 

They face each other and the only kind of lubrication in the moment is the thick viscous fluid oozed from a donor on the bed. It won’t really suffice because it will dry, sticky and hard and cause too much discomfort in the long term but for a moment it’ll ease the burn of penetration. Will _hates_ himself. Hates this moment. His life. He fucking hates Hannibal. He hates fucking Hannibal. His body jerks with pain and he gasps desperately into the stilled air while his hands find purchase on the back of the older man’s shirt.

His cock is still a surprise. Each and every time he is shocked into silent awe. The burn and pull. It hurts. Nobody can ever full explain how much it hurts to take a full sized cock in his ass on the floor of a motel room because a woman he has just murdered is using the bed.  


At first it was all control and humiliation, now it’s all about ownership. Hannibal can do whatever he wants because that is the name of the game. What can Will do now? Leave? He hitches his leg up over Hannibal’s hip as much as he can with his grey boxers still holding him together. He eases them down to the best of his ability, feeling the pressure of Hannibal burrowing deeper inside of him. He doesn’t cry anymore like he use to. It was never like a non consensual cry - more of a frustration thing. The kind of tears that spring up after you’ve fought a long and hard battle only to be told your point is moot. Now he’s dry and tries to ignore the ache of his own cock, throbbing between his legs thoroughly ignored. Hannibal moves his position, a knee off Will's soft stomach so he can breath a bit deeper.   


They fuck in silence for the most part. Hannibal being totally silent. Will being the mostly part. The only noises Hannibal makes is his clothing, shifting around him, his skin against Will’s, even steady breathing. Will, he gasps and pants sometimes. His air catches inside his lungs when the zipper of Hannibal’s slacks catch the tender skin normally hidden away from the world. He hisses in a sharp intake of pain and Hannibal smirks, quickens his pace if only by a fraction of a second. Will used to think Hannibal hated this, just by the businesslike approach. He’s learned otherwise since.

He dares again to sneak one hand down between the bodies, slick with sweat and runs it up and down his length. Hannibal presses himself down, applying the pressure of his body. A kind of pressure and restraint that says only he is allowed the control of this moment. 

Will’s mind wonders back to if he was ever normal, wonders if he would ever have been a functional human if talons were not torn into his skin and ripped him apart until this play at love is the closest thing he has to humanity. It’s hard to say. He bites his lip, tastes some unknown woman under his tongue. Hannibal tastes it on him. There are such small differences between his body and dinner. 

The amount of salt in the air is dehydrating and Hannibal, he fucking  _ hurts . _ It does nothing to lessen Will’s arousal, but he still wants this finished. Picks up his hips, pressed himself as much as he can back into the assault of the larger body above him. He bucks himself back, squinting his eyes. He dares to take one of Hannibal's hands from beside his head, this is not his first rodeo and he understands the tricks. 

He brings it back to his face, licks the fat pad of a thumb, mumbles around it. 

“Hungry.” 

He takes a soft bite with only his front teeth. It is the tackiest thing he can think of in the moment and Hannibal, he wraps that hand right around Will’s supple neck and squeezes right around the edges. The key between playing and doing is oxygen and blood flow. Playing you cut of blood, the illusion of strangulation related to lightheadedness. The switch is nearly instantaneous and then it goes from play to so very real. Right across the front of his neck and it is as grisly as any true crime magazine. He may as well have his hand wrapped around Will’s leaking and forgotten cock for how effective it is. 

A few moments without what is needed for the very function of life makes him nearer and nearer the edge until he topples over with harsh thrusts and his face a reddened mess. He never knows really - feeling his body part from his mind for a few seconds if Hannibal ever really truly finishes. The moment itself doesn’t matter for him more so this moment matters. This is his rules, his game. 

He pulls out and straightens up before Will can even breathe correctly, his air still coming in and out of him in harsh ugly gasps. He is a sticky mess, disgusted with himself and the world. Hannibal would be otherwise quiet, but he is nothing but businesslike. He zips his pants and adjusts his bloody mess of a shirt. 

“Please compose yourself William - our dinner is getting cold.” 

**Author's Note:**

> Name is from one of my favorite songs on one of my favorite soundtracks of all time.


End file.
